The WD Black2 Dual Drive is a one-of-a-kind internal drive

December 9, 2013

Transcript

Hi, guys.
Dong Ngo is here.
And if you ask me how to make your computer a lot faster while cheap, my first answer is it is how a small SSD like this one right here, 120 gig, and another hard drive right here.
That way, you put the operating system on the SSD and data on the hard drive.
You have both performance and capacity.
Now, of course, you can only do this with a desktop computer.
That bring me to
my second answer, which is this all new Black 2 Dual Drive from WD.
Now, take a look here.
This is exactly a standard laptop drive, which it is.
But on the inside, though, you'd have two separate drive.
One of them is a 120 gigabyte SSD, and the other one is 1 terabyte hard drive.
Basically, this is the other solution here crammed into one small standard box.
Most important to know that this is not a
hybrid drive.
And that's because the two drives on inside are never meant to be merged together in one partition.
They remain two separate drives.
In other words, in Windows computer, you would find the two drives on the inside as two separate drive letters, such as C and D. It's not a hybrid drive also because it offers you real SSD performance.
Let me show you.
All right.
I have here an old laptop.
You know, five or six years ago, it was a beast.
Cutting edge.
But
now, it's kind of too heavy and too big, and kind of too slow.
If you've noticed, there's a stain on top here.
And that's because it's been used a lunch tray for a while.
Now, this computer come with a 100 gigabyte hard drive, and it take quite a long time to boot.
And everything is quite slow.
Now, notice the Windows XP index here for storage is 5.0.
That's 5.0 out of 5.9, which is the cap in Windows Vista.
Now, let's put some new life into this by swapping the hard drive out with this Black 2. Look.
I'll show you the entire swapping process.
You can check that out in my other how-to video.
But I do tell you that the Black 2 here comes included with system clone software and this very handy USB 2.0 to SATA cable.
Just make sure that your old hard drive has less than 120 gigabyte of data on it.
And that's because out of the box, only the SSD drive of the Black 2 is recognized.
This is to make sure that you wouldn't clone or install the operating system on it.
When that's all done, it should download, install, and run the Black 2 partitioning software that would unlock and format that one terabyte hard drive as a new partition.
Now, there you go.
You can see you have two drive now, the 120 gigabyte C drive, and the one terabyte D drive.
Now, note that the Windows XP index now is 5.9, a huge improvement.
Again, 5.9 is as high as can be in Windows Vista.
Now, in my testing, the Black 2 Dual Drive
was indeed very fast, about as fast as any entry-level SSD.
And it offers a lot more storage space than any SSD on the market.
For that reason, it's totally worth the $300 price tag.
Now, for more of the dual drive here, check out my full review at CNET.com.
You know, it's pretty great.
Not as great as a single high-end high-capacity solid-state drive, though, or better yet, two of them together.
If you're gonna afford that-- which I do.
I have them right here.
750
gig, 400 gig together.
That's only because I'm Dong Ngo.
And this has been the first look at the Black 2 Dual Drive from WD.